


How The Gods Were Born

by sweetcarolanne



Category: Original Work
Genre: Eggs Hatch While Still Inside and Live Birth Ensues, Goddesses, Hybrid Pregnancy - Baby Gets The Best Of Both Parent Species' Traits, Hybrid Pregnancy - Baby Gets The Worst Of Both Parent Species' Traits, Matriarchal society, Monsters, Multiple Birth, Original Mythology, Other, Pregnancy, Religious/Spiritual/Magic Rites, impregnated for the greater good, pregnant through magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:47:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23724808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetcarolanne/pseuds/sweetcarolanne
Summary: When the brightest star rises to its highest point in the sky, the elders tell the story of how the gods were born.
Relationships: Giant Squid Impregnates Island
Comments: 11
Kudos: 18
Collections: Unusual_Bearings_2020





	How The Gods Were Born

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gammarad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/gifts).



> Dear recipient, I hope you enjoy this story!
> 
> Many thanks to my anonymous beta.

When the brightest star rises to its highest point in the sky, the elders tell the story of how the gods were born.

For the first people who arrived on the island’s shores many centuries ago, seeking the excitement of discovering new lands, existence was bleak. Very little vegetation grew, and the only prey to hunt besides fish were the sea-birds. To the newcomers, these tasted stringy and disgusting, and they longed to return to their previous home where game was plentiful and the trees were laden with the sweetest and juiciest of fruit.

The new chieftainess shook her head in sorrow when her tribal council raised the people’s fears and wishes. Young though she was, her quick wits more than qualified her to follow in her wise mother’s footsteps.

“Returning to the old island would be far too dangerous,” she said. “So many of our tribe have perished on the wild seas already, and I will not risk the lives of those who still remain. I still have the gift my mother gave me before we sailed away – three magic spells sealed within gourds. I will break one gourd open, and wish for the island to come to life so that we may be fed.”

From a hollowed rock where sacred things were stored, the chieftainess took one of the three gourds and broke it open.

“I wish for our island home to be fertile,” she cried, and thunder crashed in the distance while the waves roared louder and rose higher all around the island’s shores than they ever had before.

Brown landscapes began to cover themselves in green. Rain fell from the sky, and sweet-scented flowers grew from the soil and the air was soon heavy with their exquisite perfume that drew in swarms of honeybees. Magnificent forests now covered the formerly barren land, and the branches of the trees soon bent under the weight of the most delicious fruit imaginable. Birdsong and the calls of animals rang out from the woods, and the people all rejoiced.

The island had come alive, in far more ways than one.

Beneath the surface of the ocean waters, dirt and stone transformed to flesh and blood. Ancient eyes closed before the dawn of human time were open and gleaming, blinking in the dark depths of the ocean and filling them with yellow light. The strange beast, on whose back the land mass grew like a turtle’s shell, began to move her supple limbs and snake-like neck. Her green and purple scales glittered like sunken jewels, and she opened her toothless jaws to suck in massive clouds of plankton, nourishing the massive body that had been in stasis for millennia.

Wide awake and growing stronger by the moment, the creature began to emit a low, melodious hum that the people of the island took to be the surging of the seas and did not notice, so overjoyed were they to have food aplenty and trees to cut down and use to build proper homes.

From a sunken oceanic cave, another massive creature began to rise and swim towards the island, her many tentacles alive with light and casting glowing rays of red and blue and silver through the black water.

She was the Kraken, the dweller in the depths. The mightiest of all the giant squids, queen of the underworld, was coming to the end of her long life at last. Her egg-sac swelled and bobbed on the undersea currents as she sought a place to spawn and die in peace, calmly accepting the fate she had been born to.

Golden light from the living island’s eyes caught the Kraken in its shimmering beam, and the calming hum drew her closer to the gigantic turtle’s curving shell; her egg-sac detached, sucked into a fissure in its hardness. She fell back, weakened and exhausted, but the bright glow surrounded the dying Kraken and lifted her beyond the surface of the ocean, into the vast night sky.

 _Here you may watch your young grow and thrive forever, and they will not forget you_ , the gentle, soothing tones of the hum seemed to be telling her.

“A new star, brighter than the others,” whispered the people of the island, and they gave thanks with a feast the next night when the Mother-Star, as they called it, rose again.

“She is watching us,” the young chieftainess told her followers, and they believed, although it was the Kraken-spawn, sleeping and changing and growing within the island’s protective carapace, that the Mother-Star kept watch over. Unseen by all, the eggs hatched within the island, feeding on the nutrients her sheltering body gave and becoming something other than the squidlings they had been.

Years passed, and the young chieftainess became a wise old woman, teaching her daughters and granddaughters the ways of leadership. The people prospered, growing crops in the rich soil and keeping herds of animals instead of hunting, and their tiny villages grew into bustling towns. Yet despite the tribe’s good fortune, something seemed to be lacking, a sense of spiritual law and guidance from beyond the human realm. There was the Mother-Star to worship, but she was cold and remote and could not fulfil the role of divine protector.

“Our tribe needs gods and goddesses,” the old chieftainess said, and she went to the hollow rock where sacred things reposed, and broke the second of the gourds she had kept hidden for so long.

Clouds gathered in the skies and lightning flashed in lurid streaks of white and orange. Huge cracks appeared in the ground, and the people screamed and fled to the seashore, where they stood and huddled and stared in horror and amazement.

From the chasms newly carved into the earth rose hordes of giants, covered in green and purple scales with long tentacles flowing from their snakelike necks and broad-shelled backs. Half had gentle eyes that glowed with golden light, and half had fierce eyes shining red and blue and silver. The tentacles of the fierce ones were lined with vicious hooks, and forked tongues flickered from their mouths as they licked their lips and gazed hungrily upon the cowering tribespeople on the beach.

As one, the fierce-eyed monsters moved forward to devour their prey, but the gentle-eyed ones blocked their path. With shrieks and roars and great convulsions of the earth, the beasts began to fight while the humans fled to safety as best they could.

The battle raged for many days and nights, until the devils were driven to the deepest parts of the sea, from whence their mothers had both come.

“You have saved us from destruction, and we are grateful,” the old chieftainess said to the gentle-eyed ones, extending her hands in supplication to them. “How can we ever repay you?”

The leader of the new gods seemed almost to smile upon the chieftainess, then gestured with one sinuous tentacle towards the setting sun.

“Give us a home,” she said, and her voice was low and soothing like her island mother’s mating call.

With a reverent nod, the chieftainess sent her first-born daughter to fetch the very last of the magic gourds. 

Holding the gourd aloft with a whispered prayer, the chieftainess shattered it against the rocks below. In the distance, glorious blue-green mountains began to rise, with peaks so high that they pierced the soft white clouds. 

And in these mountains the gods dwelled for evermore, protecting the people from their evil siblings in the ocean’s depths. Temples of stone were built to honour them, and mighty cities came to be where once there had been small towns. Through dreams and visions the gods told wondrous secrets to the priests and priestesses, and over this new culture watched the mothers of the gods, the shining Kraken-star in the heavens and the gold-eyed turtle mother underneath the surging seas.


End file.
